Trying to explain what música ranchera is to non-Mexicans reminds me of the apocryphal quote attributed to–take your pick–Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington, when someone asked what jazz is. Ranchera ...

The caravan of Klansmen crept to a stop around midnight in front of the home of David and Lizzie Milder on Nov. 17, 1932. Their quaint bungalow in the Carroll Park neighborhood of Long Beach had just ...

Go ahead, call us a bunch of culture-less, lily-white suburbanites with a partiality to flip-flops and right-wing politics. Those kind of labels never cease to amuse us. Because one thing that ...

Dwight Manley: The Brea King? Illustration by Paul Nagel. Photo by Federico Medina. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, once a young apprentice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and who later ran “Rainbow ...

In early 2018, the Orange County Board of Supervisors evicted the homeless from tents along the Santa Ana Riverbed, only to realize there was no place to relocate them. In March, the board voted ...

John Hamilton went to Newport Harbor High School in the late 1950s with members of the Hanson family, the owners/operators of Hi-Time Wine Cellars in Costa Mesa, the best vino and booze purveyor in ...

Disneyland custodian Al Ramos came back from vacation in September 1984 with no work to return to, save for walking the picket line outside his job. The company wanted a two-year wage freeze, no ...

After eating dinner and watching television at his girlfriend’s Santa Ana apartment on Spurgeon Street, 17-year-old Charles Honea went to sleep outside on the second-floor balcony, his makeshift ...

The story of the 1990 New Music Seminar brawl has been whispered about for decades but never fully told—until now. This excerpt comes from Ben Westhoff's upcoming book Original Gangstas: The Untold ...

DEAR MEXICAN: I've heard the Tijuana donkey show featuring a female whore is not real other than the fact they do bring out a donkey and do some simulation for people who are drunk.

Decades later, long after federal authorities deported the last of her students, Arletta Kelly still remembered the cactus. In the 1920s and 1930s, Kelly had worked as an Americanization teacher in ...

Everyone loves bands that play cover songs. Ever since there have been bands, there have been other bands, who come after and cover them live and on record. Not only did some of the greatest rock ...